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InterNational
Geographic
'A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS'
(This Page is still being worked on)
CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY: The study of countries', cultures, customs, foods, clothing, music, architecture, traditions, religions and languages of the world. The world has about 200 different nations and over 6,000 distinct languages in it. Since languages are a basic part of forming a basis for a culture, then there are over 6,000 different cultures in the world also. Since it would be almost impossible to represent them all on this webpage, a sample of some of the world's general or main cultural pools is shown below from the geographic areas of Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas and Oceania.
Of the 6,000 or so languages in the world, most are spoken by small tribal groups and only about 12-15 are used in a widespread fashion in international trade and politics. The rest are national languages of the dominant culte in any given nation except in Africa and the Americas, where the official national languages are often that of their former European colonialists. In the recent past, of course, 'English' has become the accepted international language of trade.
Other Cultural Websites Around the World (see bottom of page for more): http://www.moparts.com/grf/visits.htm
AFRICA: Since there are over 1,000 languages and only about 50 different countries in Africa, many nations use the language of their former European colonists as their 'official' language (English, French, German, Italian, Portugese and Dutch). The largest native language groups are Arabic in the north, Yoruba, Ibo and Hausa in the west, Amharic (Ethiopian) and Kiswahili in the east and Zulu in the south.
The main racial stocks of Africa are the Arabic peoples in the north, Bantu peoples of the west, central and south, the pygmies and Watusi (Tutsi) of central Africa and the Ethiopian and Swahili speaking peoples of east Africa. While Africa has modern technology and infrastructures, the following photos concentrate on the traditional and cultural aspects of the continent.
ASIA (Near and Middle East): This region is dominated by Arabic, Hebrew (Israeli), Farsi (Iranian, old Persia) and Hindi (Indian) speaking peoples. There arew about 40 different Arabic speaking nations spread across North Africa, the Middle East and SE Asia. India has over 25 principal languages each seperated generally by their own province.
ASIA (the FAR EAST, Oriental Asia): Can generally be thought of as being dominated in the east and north by China, the Koreas and Japan. Japan and the Koreas have one principal language each, while China has about 300 spoken languages that all share a common written language. In SE Asia, the principal nations are Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Phillipines. Principal languages are Vietnamese, Kymer (Cambodian), Laotian, Thai (Thailand), Burmese, Malay (Indonesia and Malaysia) and Pilipino (Tagalog) for the Phillipines.
EUROPE: may be classified into three main sub-groups. The northwestern (Anglo-Saxon) Peoples, southern (Mediterranean) peoples and the eastern (Slavic) peoples with their almost corresponding language groups (Gemanic, Romantic and Slavic).
the AMERICAS: are generally divided into four distinct regions. North America, Central America, the Caribbean and South America. In the last 3 regions mentioned, Spanish is the dominant language spoken (except Portugese in Brazil). In North America it is the English, Spanish and French languages. The Americas also have over 500 Native American tribes, many of whom still speak their own languages. In the Arctic region of earth's north, Native peoples who share a common culture live in the northern parts of the United States, Canada, Russia, Greenland (Denmark) and the rest of Northern Europe. They are known as Eskimos and Inuit, among other names.
OCEANIA: the definition of Oceania sometimes includes the continent of Australia and sometimes does not. In this definition it is included along with New Zealand because of the dispersal of native peoples prior to the coming of the Europeans. There are hundreds of distinct languages in Oceania (300 alone in Papua New Guinea), but with only three distinct regions divided among the thousands of islands of the 'South Pacific', another name sometimes used to describe the region.
The three distinct regions (and island groups) are made up of peoples belonging to distinct racial, cultural and linguistic groups. They are Melanesia (meaning 'dark skinned' people and referring to possible African origins), Micronesia (meaning 'scattered islands') and Polynesia (meaning 'many islands'). The Micronesians are related to the Malays, Indonesians and Filipinos. The Polynesians are related to the Micronesians but are lighter skinned and stockier. The native peoples of Australia were Melanesian, while the native peoples of Hawaii and New Zealand were Polynesian.
